You know the story.

Twenty thousand people toiled for twenty-two years to build the Taj Mahal. It is a mausoleum for Mumtaz Mahal, wife of the Emperor Shah Jahan. The ultimate monument to love.

When at last the domes and minarets rose to the sky, Shah Jahan ordered the eyes of the architect to be plucked out and the hands of the workers cut off, so the beauty of the Taj Mahal could never be eclipsed.

There is alway a price to pay for beauty.

A road to somewhere famous is itself a famous road. From Bharatpur to Agra the ragged tarseal winds through listless fields of winnowing women. A red-turbanned road-wallah pours black ooze from a silver teapot into the cracks in the asphalt. There are many cracks. It is a small teapot.

Around the next bend, a tanker truck has spilled onto its side. The sign on the tanker says `LPG – Danger. Highly flammable.’ What of the driver? The smashed windscreen gives a gruesome clue, but of the man himself there is no sign. The tanker has lain in the road for a long time. Rust creeps along the crevices.

A man on a motorcycle stops. He dumps a dead calf near the wreck. He rides away across the rocky fields.

It is very hot, and there is no water anywhere.

The road curves left, into a small bustle of a town. All the traffic on the road to Agra jostles for their patch of dirt. A beggar with one leg, the other a club foot, calipers his way through the camels and trucks, the buses, scooters and oxcarts.

A club-footed horse, an animal version of the man, sways in the middle of the road. Its head droops. Froth spills from its lips and its sides heave. The scooters and trucks swerve around the horse. No-one comes to lead the horse away.

The town ends. All at once the traffic dissolves, as if conjured away by magic. The road is clear and straight.

The Taj Mahal is closer now.

A few thin trees bend over the road. Dark shaggy lumps huddle beneath the trees, dozens of them scattered along the roadside. When a car goes by the dark lumps heave up on their hind feet, jerked by chain through their skulls. The men on the end of the chains manipulate the bears, these shaggy lumps, like monstrous marionettes. The bears paw the air. Dancing.

A car stops. A family gets out. Two children sit on the back of a bear. The father takes a photo. The family gets back into the car. They don’t give a backward glance to the dark lumps.

Only a few more kilometres. Heat shimmers in waves over the asphalt, shapeshifting the rough roadway into a silver stream stretching away, away

To Agra, and the Western entrance to the Taj.

No. No T-shirts plastic Taj Mahals stone elephants strings of faux pearls pens postcards. No no no no. Thank you. No.

Line up for the security check. Leave all food, tobacco and matches behind. Matches? Does marble burn?

Through the red sandstone gateway, its walls etched with Arabic verses of the Koran, out the other side -

To the Taj Mahal.

It is exquisite.

More lovely than any photo or painting, more graceful than a dream of swans.

The five domes glow white as if lit from within by a thousand deathless candles. The minarets reach up like slim hands imploring the heavens. There is not enough time to gaze at all of the semi-precious gems gleaming red and blue in the marble walls of the ultimate mausoleum.

The tombs of Mumtaz Mahal and Shah Jahan lie side by side screened behind marble filigree. They are false. The real tombs lie in the basement, safe from prying tourist eyes unappreciative of love.

On the road back to Bharatpur, it is twilight. The bears dance. The lame horse still sways in the road.

There is always a price to pay for beauty.